By Daniel Itai, Johannesburg, South Africa.
(News of The South) – Samkele Maseko a former political journalist of the private owned broadcast entity eNCA has spoken out about political interference at eNCA.
This comes just days after eNCA pulled out of the Economic Freedom Front (EFF)’s National People’s Assembly for revoking media access to some South African media outlets.
Maseko is also accusing eNCA’s head of news, Kanthan Pillay, of wanting journalists to find faults with workers at all costs whilst protecting bosses.
Lobby activist group the Right2Know Campaign has called for a wider debate on media freedom in South Africa.
Right2Know Campaign manager Thami Nkosi said Maseko’s statements raise a lot of eyebrows which need to be evaluated, “it raises a whole bunch of questions about media ethics and essentially, how we provide a service or a disservice to the South African citizens access to information and the right to actually be informed.
It brings back the sharp focus of the level of interference that happens behind closed doors and essentially, what stories make it out and for what reasons and what stories are censored and for what reasons. So, I think it’s a general conversation that we should have.”
The EFF today called upon all South Africans to boycott eNCA. South Africa is currently sitting on the 31st position of the World Press Freedom Index.
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